(DailyDig.com) – On July 12, AT&T publicized a major security breach of almost all of their customers’ call records occurring over six months, from May 1 to October 31, 2022.
The data breach included not only AT&T’s cellular customers but also the network’s Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO), such as Consumer Cellular, Boost Mobile, and Cricket. The number of customers affected was in the millions, according to the company.
Alex Byers, an AT&T spokesman, stated that the breach happened at Snowflake, a third-party company that they use to store customers’ call information on the cloud. Snowflake was also involved in the same type of data security breach that happened to Santander Bank and Ticketmaster. Brad Jones, Snowflake’s security officer, stated that they didn’t have any evidence that their platform had any misconfiguration, vulnerability, or that a breach occurred.
An FBI spokesperson verified that AT&T became aware of the data breach sometime in April when their investigation exposed the accessed call logs by hackers, as their filing stated to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the FBI, AT&T, and the Department of Justice (DOJ), they decided to delay any public announcement due to a potential risk to public safety and national security.
Byers claimed that the breached data consisted of phone numbers that AT&T customers communicated with, as well as the number of times each phone number interacted with a call or text. The data also included the dates and duration of each call.
What data was not downloaded from Snowflake were the contents of the texts or calls, nor their time stamps. Hackers did not download any other personal data that could potentially identify the customer personally, according to Byers.
AT&T posted a notice on their blog, stating that they have taken precautions to prevent access to their data and are collaborating with law enforcement to locate and arrest those who were involved in the breach. The notice stated that they had already arrested one person of interest.
Copyright 2024, DailyDig.com
